If you were to talk about sixteen bit computing in retrocomputing circles, misty-eyed reminiscences of the ST or Amiga would emerge. Both fine platforms, but oddly the elephant in the 16-bit room has become a victim of its own success. DOS, the granddaddy of all PC operating systems, seems oddly overshadowed by its 68000-based competitors in a way it certainly wasn’t back in the day. Perhaps it’s the often-atrocious graphics when cards designed for business graphics were pressed into gaming service, but it’s easy to forget that DOS PCs were the powerhouses of their day. They still pack a punch even in 2023, as [Lunduke] is here to show us by running a DOS web server. Take that, nginx!
Three letter file extensions for the win!
While Microsoft and IBM abandoned DOS a very long time ago, the OS lives on in the form of the well-maintained open-source equivalent, FreeDOS. It’s a lifeline for people with DOS-era hardware to maintain as much as it is a favourite in retrocomputing, thus it’s the obvious place to start when installing a web server.
It’s a while since we navigated the many layers of DOS packet drivers and TCP stacks, but this guide implies that the FreeDOS folks have made it a much nicer process than it used to be. He installs the Sioux and WebServ web servers to compare two different options, configures the network, and hey presto!, a web page!
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